Goaltenders will be key for St. Louis Blues vs. Dallas Stars series

The matchup between Jordan Binnington and Ben Bishop makes the St. Louis Blues versus Dallas Stars second-round series extremely interesting.

The biggest story of the second round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs will be on the Columbus Blue Jackets versus Boston Bruins series. Columbus will have to prove if they’re the real deal to content for a cup this season or if their first-round victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning was a fluke. However, the most interesting story to watch will be happening between the pipes in the St. Louis Blues and Dallas Stars series.

These two teams sport two of the best goalies left in the playoffs in Ben Bishop with the Stars and Jordan Binnington with the Blues. It’s interesting these two goalies are at different points of their careers.

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Bishop is playing the best hockey of his career, although on his fifth NHL team since entering the league for a short stint in 2008-2009. Interestingly, he started his career playing for the Blues. After a successful stint as Craig Anderson’s back up with the Ottawa Senators, he was traded to Tampa Bay and played an integral run in the team’s successful building.

It was the arrival of Bishop that made the Lightning a solid threat, as it solidified their then uncertain and weak goaltending situation. He wound up taking them to the 2015 Stanley Cup Final. However, the emergence of the cheaper, and younger, Andrei Vasilevskiy made him expendable. Bishop was dealt to the Los Angeles Kings at the 2017 deadline.

His Hollywood dream didn’t last long. That offseason, he was traded to and signed a long-term extension with Dallas. His arrival with the Stars was similar to his arrival in Tampa. Bishop was brought in to add stability to a goaltending situation on an otherwise strong team. Prior to his arrival, Dallas had been going with the unsuccessful and aging tandem of Kari Lehtonen and Antii Niemi.

Binnington is the new fresh faces rookie whose arrival turned the Blues from the NHL’s last place team to playoff contenders. This next series might not necessarily be the “old guard versus new guns” matchup the 2012 Stanley Cup finals was between Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils and Jonathan Quick of the Kings. But it’s still monumental in its own right.

Let’s start with Ben Bishop. While Dallas may not have been a strong team all year (remember their owner’s now-infamous comments about Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn’s early season struggles), Bishop has had a career year in Texas.

Although only playing 46 games, he posted numbers most goalies can only dream of having with a 1.98 GAA and 0.934 save percentage, both career highs.

Bishop’s success carried into the playoffs when the Stars upset the Nashville Predators, who were favorites but not heavy favorites. Throughout that six-game series, Benn posted a 1.89 GAA with an identical to the regular season 0.934 save percentage.

The bright lights of the playoffs obviously didn’t get the best of him. Bishop himself was the main factor in why the high-flying Predators struggled to score in the playoffs. It also helped that age began to show in Pekka Rinne and he lost that mid-career invigoration he got during the 2017 cup run.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis’s series against the Winnipeg Jets, Binnington’s statistics sit at a much more modest 2.63 GAA and .908 save percentage, playing in the same amount of playoff games so far.

While there was a little variance between Bishop’s regular season numbers and his playoff statistics, he suffered a considerable decrease from his 1.89 GAA and 0.927 save percentage, but that’s not entirely unexpected in the playoffs.

This playoff matchup will be a huge test for Binnington. How many times have fans seen young goaltenders go on great late season/postseason runs, only to see their success not be sustainable?

Remember the likes of Andrew Hammond and Cam Ward? Taking this year’s playoffs into consideration, the Stars were a higher scoring team than the Predators. So far Binnington’s only other goaltender matchup in the playoffs has been Connor Hellebuyck, who was part of Winnipeg’s losing effort, but posting similar stats with 2.67 GAA and a slightly better .913 save percentage.

His biggest test will come on special teams. Overall, St. Louis’s power play has been more effective than Dallas’s throughout the first round. However, it was Dallas’s power play at home that led them to victory.

If Binnington is on the wrong side of a man advantage at the American Airlines Center, he should be worried. And if the Blues go on the man advantage that might not help either, as Dallas is the only team in this year’s playoffs to kill every penalty against them and enter the second round with a 100% penalty kill. But there is some good news for Binnington, as Dallas’s shots per game in the playoffs are lower than Nashville’s were in their losing first-round attempt.